Gene-Environment Interplay in Alcoholism

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This K05 application requests 5 years of support to allow the PI to commit protected time and effort to his research and mentoring program focused on gene-environment interplay and risk-mechanisms in alcoholism, freeing him from the encroachment of administrative responsibilities. The Pi's mentoring will engage 4 junior faculty in the pursuit of independence as NIAAA-funded R01 investigators, in the substantive areas of (i) offspring environmental risks and socioemotional problems associated with parental alcoholism, and comorbidity during the toddler and preschool years, (ii) etiology of very early-onset alcohol and other substance use, with a particular focus on risk-mechanisms associated with parental divorce/never marriage, (iii) transitions in alcohol use and problems from adolescence through young adulthood, particularly the impact of childhood assaultive trauma, and (iv) personal and offspring outcomes, and risk-factors, associated with remission versus recovery of alcohol problems in women with recurrent drunk driving. These diverse research areas are well-matched with the Pi's long-standing interests in (i) alcoholism in women, and (ii) the environmental contexts in which the genetic transmission of alcoholism risk occurs. Additionally, the PI will continue his contributions to the alcoholism field through R01-supported projects which involve (i) follow-up at age 30 of MOAFTS, a birth cohort of female like-sex twin pairs followed from median age 15 to identify mediators and moderators of genetic influences on onset of and recovery from versus persistence in alcohol problems; (ii) continued follow-up of the Australian Children-of-Twins cohorts, contrasting outcomes associated with maternal or paternal alcoholism (high environmental risk, high genetic risk) versus alcoholism only in parent's MZ co-twin (reduced environmental risk, high genetic risk), or DZ co-twin (intermediate genetic risk) and controls; and (iii) methodologic contributions and secondary data-analyses that take advantage of the coordinated assessments, and informativeness about environmental and gene environmental interplay mechanisms, of studies in the Australian twin register and MOAFTS (including the availability of ATR genome-wide association data on 4000 individuals). Understanding environmental contexts for the genetic inheritance of alcoholism should improve both understanding of how to identify and intervene with groups at high-risk for problems, and gene-discovery.